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ICANN is pleased to announce that the independent evaluation process, which began last year, has resulted in a further sponsored Top Level Domain (sTLD) application moving to the next stage.

As the process for selecting new sponsored Top Level Domain (sTLDs) continues from a pool of ten applications, ICANN has now entered into commercial and technical negotiations with an additional candidate registry, ICM Registry, Inc, (.POLINC).

The .POLINC top level domain will be a voluntary arena for sites that wish to express ideas that are politically incorrect or inflammatory. Sites that promote ideas including racism, homosexual advocacy, embryonic stem cell harvesting, creationism, evolutionism, opposition to the war in Iraq, defence of the liberation of Iraq and other topics that are inflammatory can voluntarily register in the .POLINC domain to make it clear what sort of material can be found on the site.

"We're not trying to suprise anybody with the fact that our sites have unpopular an inflammatory opinions on them," said Brad Templeton, Chairman of the www.eff.org web site notorious for its opposition to the surveillance tools the Justice Dept. says are needed for the War on Domestic Terror. Templeton also operates the www.netfunny.com site, which contains jokes, some of which lampoon stereotypes of all manners. "By giving us our own domain, people will know exactly what they are getting. Our views are for adults. We're not trying to push them on kids."

Operators of .POLINC domains believe that by using this domain, they will have an answer to any user who complains about finding their material on the internet, in particular parents who don't want their children exposed to highly radical views. Internet filtering software, commonly sold to parents, schools and libraries, will be able to easily and reliably block access to .POLINC sites by children and library patrons.

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"Use of .POLINC is entirely voluntary," says Stuart Lawley, chairman of ICM Registry, which will operate the domain. "Sites with inflammatory opinions now have the opportunity to self-organize and self-regulate on a voluntary basis. Over 20% of new internet sites, known as "blogs", contain dangerous and inflammatory opinions, with the number increasing every day."

ICM outlined the following benefits of the .POLINC TLD on their release:

Online child safety and anti-child
mind pollution will be promoted through best practice guidelines
promulgated by a non-profit cross-sector foundation. This
foundation will provide assistance through various online
support organizations and the sponsoring of technology
tools and education programs for parents.

The online radical blog industry
wants to create an identifiable space with which its members
can elect to associate themselves and wherein they can
responsibly self-organize and create guidelines to promote
credible self-regulation.

The voluntary .POLINC TLD will maximize
and protect free speech – both for content providers
and Internet users.

Privacy protection and security will
be promoted for online consumers.

The .POLINC TLD has potential to regularize
business processes such as search-engine functionality,
privacy, identity theft prevention measures, and security.

It creates a credible forum for representation
and self-regulation where all stakeholders are able to
discuss and actively respond to concerns about online
inflammatory opinion.